KUMIITA – Educational programming toy for 0 year olds on up

$35,029

158

$50,000 Stretch Goal and Panel Addition Announcement

Our new stretch goal will be $50,000! We look forward to continuing our development of KUMIITA so we can bring a further improved and entertaining product to you. We kindly ask for your continued support so we can make that a reality.

We will also be releasing 3 new panels, which all backers who purchased $195 and over will receive! The new panels include a Music Reverse panel and Key and Door panels. The Music Reverse panel will play the sound panels placed before it in reverse. The Key and Door panels will add a new challenge by requiring the robot to obtain a “key” before it reaches a “door” to pass. Please click on here for more deatails.

KUMIITA is an educational toy designed for 0 to 3 year olds to teach them the concepts of programming. By providing a language-less and hands-on experience in the form of a puzzle game, children can become accustomed to programming from a young age. KUMIITA cultivates the basic thinking patterns and logic behind programming in children by allowing them to physically assemble command panels and see how the resulting programs are executed - and why they fail at times, as well. Failed programs can also be fixed by rearranging the panels in various ways, allowing children to figure out new solutions for themselves.

KUMIITA was created to realize the CEO Toshi’s vision of a “prosperous future through technology” by providing children with opportunities to become familiar with programming so that they could be future programmers, or to use their knowledge and concepts of programming as a tool to better their future.

Using programming fundamentals like these to configure the panels, there are so many possibilities with KUMIITA to notch up the difficulty level. Even children over three (and adults too!) will be sure to be edu-tained!

The demo of the two outcomes of Question 1 (SWITCH)

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The Robot has successfully reached the goal, so it played the fanfare.

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The Robot has failed to navigate itself to the goal, so it played the error sound with red LED.

You and your child's new coding robot buddy. The KUMIITA robot glides over the panels scanning them to execute the pictured commands.

The panels used to give instructions to the KUMIITA robot. The Basic Kit includes 40 command panels.

Size:
Height 120 mm (4.7 in)
Diameter: 78 mm (3 in)

Weight: 250 g (8.8 oz)

Body Color: White

Battery: Alkaline Battery (Size and number of batteries to be announced.)

Running Time: 1 day (depending on motor and Wifi usage.)

Speed: Normal 12.0 mm/s (0.5 inch/s) Maximum: 28.8 mm/s (1 inch/s)

LED Colors: Blue, red, green, and yellow

Robot Technology:
The robot is equipped with Grid Onput technology patented by GridMark Inc. This works with the pattern recognition scanner to sense a set of small dots printed on the command panels that act as a new generation 2D bar code. The KUMIITA robot recognizes the dots and executes the associated command.

*Please note that the specifications above are subject to change during development.

Panel Size: 120 mm x 120 mm x 2.5 mm (4.7 in x 4.7 in x 0.1 in)

Weight: 34 g (1 oz)

Panel Technology:The panels are printed with Grid Onput dots on the surface. The Grid Onput dot codes store 48 bits (max. 108 bits) of information. The scanner on the robot will recognize a 2 mm x 2 mm (0.07 in x 0.07 in ) area as one set of code and can distinguish over 300 billion different codes. The robot recognizes them as an ID, XY coordinates and also uses them to distinguish the angle of rotation. Carbon ink that absorbs infrared radiation and transparent IR absorbing ink is used to print the dot code patterns. The graphics are printed on top of the IR absorbing layer making the dots invisible to the human eye, so image quality is not affected.

*Please note that the specifications above are subject to change during development.

By expanding the variety of command panels in the future, we hope to further inspire children by representing the endless possibilities of programming.

KUMIITA is an independent project by distinguished creators brought together by Toshi's vision to realize a prosperous future through technology.

Our designer, Hiro, has won numerous international awards home appliance design, and is an experience crowdfunder including work on the design of VIE SHAIR, which collected over $170,000 through Kickstarter.
Nobu, our engineer, is a professional in the field of networking together software and hardware systems. He was head of engineering for the VIE SHAIR project, working together with Hiro.
Tomo is in charge of mass production and is a multi-player who helped with the software and hardware design, manufacture, and mass production. He is also active as our office manager.

After the project began in earnest in November 2016, we have overcome a number of issues, including improving the accuracy of the pattern code recognition technology. It was only a staggering six months that we were able to launch the product, as each member worked to bring Toshi's vision together.

We have already verified the operation on the prototype, but to put our product into mass production, we need $30,000 for die and manufacturing costs. We thank you for your support and hope you will share in our vision.

Risks and challenges

Our potential obstacles include delays in production due to circumstances regarding the printing companies and mass production suppliers we work with.

We have built a schedule well prepared to cope with any such issues if they arise, however if such delay would occur for unexpected reasons, we will communicate with backers to clarify the situation.

Rewards read "ships anywhere in the world", however our shipping service may not be able to send rewards to regions affected by conflict or natural disaster. In these cases, we would kindly ask for an alternative address.